How to perform life or is there life outside the art?

“Hence in the performance, a performer
no longer refers to the character but to
himself. In this self-reference as termed
by E. Fischer-Lichte, a performer refers to
his body, this biography as it is expressed
by his body (memories inscribed on the
body), often tells his own story in the
performance although this is not verifiable
and can also be merely fictional, but he
(again often) substantiates it with his
body or its presence; many a time the
performers perform […] with their own
name as the main characters of their own
show, the auto-personalised protagonists
of stage fiction.”– B. Lukan, Performative Gestures

At least over the last twenty years, a
trend can be perceived in contemporary
performing arts that can be named “invasion
of the real” where a performer (on stage)
constructs a meaning constructing herself. By
shifting the focus of performative strategies
from representation to presentation (of
eventfulness), a performer’s subjectivation
occurs through her own subjectivation.
This process of “performing the subject” or
“the production of subjectivity” (A. Jones)
becomes the key bearer of meaning because a
performer’s character no longer exists beyond
her physis, there is no distinction between
phenomenal and semiotic body (E. FischerLichte).

If a performer actively draws from her
life for art, what is then left of her life as
such? Some point to (A. Jones) the occurring
danger that a subject which has become a
source of creativity in the field of symbolic,
simultaneously becomes in the field of the real
implicitly invisible as the actual (ideological,
emotional, sexual, race, class and otherwise perceived and identified) body that forms the
artwork. Therefore we are interested what
“performing identity” (J. Butler) produces
in the political sense? How is this ultimate
interlacement of art and life politically potent
or emancipatory? How in this situation
construct resistance against hierarchies,
exploitations, inequalities that make part
of life? In what manner can we connect in
(real) life if we are – as artists – constantly
in the field (of symbolic) in art? Can political
activity consequently only exist in the form of
performance?

Through the analysis of their own works
presented at previous City of Women festivals,
the connections between life and art will be
discussed by artists: Katarina Stegnar (Drop
Dead), Maja Delak
(Expensive Darlings, What
If), Nataša Živković
(First Love’s Second
Chance (Getting Over Heintje), Still Life, For
Father’s Sake), Simona Semenič (Endless
Medication, I, Victim., the second time).